"Killer Joe" played at the Venice Film Festival. It played at Toronto. And late last month, director William Friedkin's pitch-black dramatic comedy began playing limited engagements around the country. This week, it finally comes home to the city in which it was shot, with an engagement starting Friday (Aug. 24) at New Orleans' Theatres at Canal Place. Here are five cool things to know about "Killer Joe" before heading to the theater to see it this weekend:

Emile Hirsch, left, and Matthew McConaughey star in director William Friedkin's dark comedy 'Killer Joe,' which was filmed in New Orleans.

5. New Orleans does Dallas. Although Friedkin's film was shot last year in New Orleans, it is set entirely in and around Dallas. That means that, outside of a scene shot at the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans theme park (see photo at left), local moviegoers shouldn't expect a wealth of tell-tale local scenery -- unless, that is, they are intimately familiar with the undersides of local interstate overpasses, vacant lots and weedy stretches of train track.

4. The write stuff. The producers of "Killer Joe" were drawn to New Orleans primarily for the state's filmmaking tax credit program, but the local shoot may have been preordained by the literary gods. Tracy Letts -- who wrote the play on which "Killer Joe" is based, as well as the screenplay for Friedkin's film -- is a great admirer of the Southern Gothic tradition and lists two locally linked literary luminaries among his influences: William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams.

3. Big love for the Big Easy. Add English actress Juno Temple -- one of the leads in Friedkin's ensemble cast -- to the list of stars who has fallen for New Orleans. "I love New Orleans," she is quoted as saying in the film's production notes. "I would happily move there. You get an incredible feeling of freedom and lust for life there. It's an alive and electric city."

2. Second time around. This isn't the first time Friedkin and Letts have teamed up for a Louisiana-shot film. Theirs also are the creative minds behind the 2006 psychological thriller "Bug," shot in 2005 largely on a hotel-room set built in the Grace King High School gym.

1. Standing firm. After "Killer Joe" received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, there was talk that it might be re-edited to get an R -- thus ensuring it would be played in more theaters than it otherwise would. Friedkin, however, stood firm, and for a simple reason: It would have destroyed the film, he said. "Neither I, nor the studio distributing the film, were willing to destroy it," Friedkin said in a recent interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune. Besides, he added, "I'm not targeting teenagers with this film. ... I think the main reason people go to films is to have an emotional response, whatever it may be: to laugh, to cry, to be scared, to be challenged, to be provoked. You don't go there just to sit and eat the popcorn and have opium for your eyes. And that's what most of the films are today. .... I'll be very frank with you: This picture is a reaction against what Hollywood is doing today."